Da 5 Bloods is quite some undertaking. By and large Lee succeeds, even if along the way the story hits some cul-de-sacs...

| Jan 27, 2021

From its sweeping jungle vistas to its full-fat orchestral score from Terence Blanchard, Da 5 Bloods often feels like an old-fashioned Hollywood adventure. But reality keeps pushing its way through in ways that can't be ignored.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 26, 2020

By the end, you'll be spent, dazed, perhaps even confused - but stunned, too, at the audacity of it all and the feeling that it is, so unequivocally, the right movie at the right time.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 13, 2020

Da 5 Bloods is so busy with ideas, thoughts, and passions that, at times, it feels like it's drowning in them.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 11, 2020

We are at a moment when no one should be allowed to avert their eyes. And when Spike Lee says to look, you do it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2020

Sometimes the best way to call attention to an historical injustice is through bold entertainment. That's certainly what the great American auteur Spike Lee has in mind with Da 5 Bloods.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 19, 2020

As usual, Spike Lee has his finger on the pulse of America. This movie feels like it was made last week.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 17, 2020

This everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach can be his strength, but while Da Five Bloods doesn't entirely lack heat, it never really gets cooking.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 17, 2020

Da 5 Bloods is the first movie I've seen since lockdown began that made me yearn to be in a packed cinema.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 16, 2020

The story and the cast keep growing and expanding outward, not always satisfyingly, sometimes outright ludicrously, but in ways that always feel alive and alert to the men this movie is about and their eerie, frequently sad, complexities.

| Jun 15, 2020

Foremost among its accomplishments is the confident ease with which it traverses many shades of human experience... Lee does this by skillfully fading discrete genres into each other over the course of its two hour and 35 minute runtime.

| Jun 15, 2020

Spike Lee takes his audience on a journey across the decades, putting a spotlight on the Black veteran experience in a way few filmmakers ever have. In doing so, he successfully links a film nominally about the Vietnam War to today's cultural battles.

| Jun 15, 2020

Spike Lee's interest in Da 5 Bloods is in the way American patriotism as a world-building exercise toxifies and intoxicates, in particular how it affects Black Americans.

| Jun 15, 2020

"Da 5 Bloods" runs two hours and thirty-four minutes, but it's not a second too long. On the contrary, it feels compressed, bustling, and frenzied with its intellectual and dramatic energy.

| Jun 15, 2020

Lee draws a line from slavery to soldiery and on to the current divide-and-rule unrest.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 14, 2020

Lee's latest is a crackerjack drama, directed by a filmmaker who remains in total control of his once-in-a-generation gifts and utilizes them to synthesize story and history into something new.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 13, 2020

Beneath the layer of blood and the ever-present threat of death, Da 5 Bloods is a study in intimate masculine relationships, specifically black ones, and the way those bonds are exploited in the name of war.

| Jun 12, 2020

It's a continued reminder that [Spike Lee] is a really vital filmmaker, and it's a strong followup to BlackKklansman.

| Jun 12, 2020

Spike Lee is being so obvious in the films that he is tipping his hat to, that it almost passes through homage and turns into a statement about ownership... It feels like a reclaiming of Hollywood myths.

| Jun 12, 2020

Lost in so much bombast is the kind of story about its main characters' lives that could've affirmed Spike Lee's critique of America.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 12, 2020